(ir)responsible
by Cezille07
Summary: "No really, Je-Jerry, I have nothing to do with this. I didn't take him out; h-h-he's just being a-a pathetic teenager," slurs Rick as he nurses his hangover with a frozen pack of peas. Meanwhile, Morty curses his grandfather's name for leaving him stranded in the outskirts of the universe. (Rated M only for mentions of sex, absolutely nothing graphic.)
1. Fail

**A/N** : I think the feeling that I'm going off of is the one from "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind", where Mortys were made to feel completely worthless. While there were a couple, certainly more depressing episodes, that one seems to tackle C-137 Rick and Morty's relationship subtly but nicely. Regardless, Rick is still pretty irresponsible sometimes, and something like this story seems quite plausible (to me at least). Please be aware that there may be some OOC moments, and if you see them, please feel free to point them out to me! Rick is so complex a character to write, but I can't help but want to dive into this story.

 **Disclaimer** : "Rick and Morty" is a genius show created by amazing people, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland. I have no affiliation with the creators/producers/etc and make no profit off of this story whatsoever.

 **Setting** : Set at some point before the events in "The Wedding Squanchers". Think of this as a separate "episode" without that much continuity.

 **Rated M** for language and some mentions of sex, but there is nothing graphic in here. (Rick is an adult though, and he can do what he pleases.)

 **Cover Image** : Unfortunately, this site hates hyperlinks. BOO. But you can find the full-res image in my deviantArt gallery; my username there is Cezille07 too.

ALRIGHT, let's get started, please enjoy!

* * *

 **Chapter 1 - Fail**

Morty quietly molded his mashed potatoes in the shape of Jessica's face, or at least he tried: the goop it was earlier was still merely a bad outline of a coconut. The piece was turning out to be more abstract art than anything, the longer he probed and prodded at his dinner. Around him, the clink of silverware on glass chimed steadily for a quarter hour, with hushed, but heated, chatter between Beth and Jerry about something accentuated by Rick's scoffing, until one by one, his family finished their food, and he was left pondering how he didn't really have any appetite. He picked up his plate and dumped its contents into the garbage.

Morty headed to his room to try to catch up on some reading. Well, back-reading. He had to face it. No matter how much Rick disregarded school, it was a necessary evil that Morty had to undergo if he ever wanted to have a job in the future. He had to finish high school somehow, enter a decent college somehow, write up a thesis which he'd understand none of, somehow, oh, and find some normal friends—maybe, well, he _had_ to—while juggling his time with his mad-scientist grandfather. School was the last thread of normalcy he was hanging onto.

But he had the last semester pretty badly, and earlier today, his teachers spoke to him in the faculty room, advising, well, practically pleading, him to get his act together.

It all came down to Rick and his impulsive needs, his streaks of madness, and his vague possessiveness of Morty's time. There had to be a limit somewhere, some form of line Morty can draw to stand up for himself. Thus slapping himself, Morty proceeded back downstairs and straight to the open garage to confront Rick.

"Rick! I need to talk to you," Morty said as he entered. He felt his blood pressure drop with exhilaration, for the respite so close at hand.

Rick continued going about the shelves—collecting fragments of machines, vials full of colorful liquids, rags, clothes—and tossed those items into a duffel bag on the desk. Morty cleared his throat; he was overlooked. He cleared his throat louder; he remained disregarded like the webs collecting on the ceiling.

"HEY!" he cried, stepping forward. He observed the winding steps his grandfather took. Barely nine o'clock and already inebriated. _Tsk!_ "Rick, for real, I need to talk to you."

Rick sang an unintelligible ditty repeatedly as he went on packing. "Ooooooh Paris, _mon amour_ , Paris _j'adore_..."

Morty stomped his foot against the nearest shelf. The fragile devices within its metal and wooden confines rattled, safely, but ominously enough for the scientist to take notice.

"Heyheyheyhey, Mortyyyy," sang Rick. "You came at a bad time. If you were planning to cash in your adventure coupons, y-you'll have to wait 'til next Monday." Rick tried to close the zipper on his bag, but it didn't budge. It overflowed with the assortment of articles he'd squeezed there. He shrugged, not really caring if it was open and absorbed the dank smell in his ship. He hauled it off the desk, and it fell heavily to the floor, startling Morty.

"But-but-bu, but I didn't want to go on an adventure, I actually just need to, ne-need it to stop," Morty protested, circling around Rick, who was now dragging the bag across the littered floor to the parked space ship outside. "All of it," he whispered.

"We can go visit a nice pocket of space-time faaaaaaaaar away from here, and we-we-we'll have ah, a good time, a good time, Morty," Rick added, not really hearing his grandson's words. "But next time. I got a date with mah ladies up in Treicel." Then Rick turned seriously to Morty, or where he thought Morty was standing. "It's a secret, Morty!" he whispered urgently to the lamp post, "Gotta, gotta be real quiet about this. Secret-like, covert, you know. Dangerous."

"A-a-a date?" Morty crossed his arms. "I'm having a crisis here, Rick, _please_ listen to me," he said, his eyes downcast.

Rick slung an arm around the same lamp post and said sang some more of his song.

Morty had had enough of this. "Fine," he muttered. He climbed aboard the ship, tumbled across the front seat holding the messy bag, and plopped to the floor under the backseat, nestled in empty bottles of Rick's misery. He listened as Rick got in and finally fastened his seatbelt after the sixth try.

The skies were clear that night, and the stars became even brighter and vivid as they escaped the Earth's atmosphere. Morty was already used to the sight, not that he didn't find it fascinating anymore—rather, he just didn't feel like it was that pretty just then, with his life down in the dumps, literally like he was right now. He felt lucky for having brought his phone, but less so that he had forgotten his earphones. Something about Rick's singing was getting on his nerves. Morty wished he could block out the offending noise easily without Rick noticing. He resigned to playing one of his offline games on silent mode.

 **~o0O0o~**

Morty gasped awake. The air-conditioning was off. The ship absolutely reeked of stale liquor, and what air he took into his lungs didn't refresh him. He brushed off the bottles that had rolled on top of him as he slept. He reached for the switch that would open the side door so he could finally breathe.

He fell on all fours, focusing only on the sweet, wintry air that blew gently around him. Once he regained his senses, he dusted himself off and took a look around:

It was hard to, though. The surrounding area was dark and flat, like a cold desert, harboring no visible life as far as he could discern. The blowing gray dust also made visibility quite low, even with a pale white moon hanging directly overhead.

Behind him stood a squat, off-white edifice whose front sign shone too brightly to be looked at directly. Morty could hear the pulsing bass inside, and he guessed that this was the place where Rick had intended for his "date". Morty highly doubted it was any decent date; if he were to guess, it was a rendezvous for sex, and Morty wanted no part in it.

"Oh man," he grumbled. There was little he could do besides wait, as he didn't want to exactly tag along on this escapade. "But maybe I could at least ask for water?"

Happy with this flash of inspiration, he went around the building, which was bigger than he initially gave it credit for. The walls, though short, were so broad it took half a minute to round the corner. Spaced evenly at intervals were large, glass windows that were heavily tinted; some were even wrapped with a dark cellophane-like material from the inside. "Huh", Morty pondered, then hurriedly changed his train of thought.

Posted at the front was a burly humanoid alien, with six arms and silver, plastic skin. Morty gulped hard as he approached.

"State your business," the alien said in a gurgling voice, eyeing Morty stonily.

Morty blinked. "Y-y-y-you speak my language?"

"We were taught by our best customer, the infamous Rick Sanchez. We treat humans, or those they bring with them, with care," the bouncer replied. He began to frisk Morty for weapons.

Morty crossed his arms in defense. Was it wise to be known as the criminal's grandson? He bit his cheek. "Don't know him. But I'd like to enter please."

"You got nothing on you, not even a wallet." Despite that, the bouncer stepped aside to let Morty in out of the cold.

But as soon as the bouncer closed the door behind him, Morty's head began to swim. Or was it the loud electronic music that shook his brain within his skull? Or the sweet, colorful aroma that penetrated his nostrils, filling his head with vivid illusions that made every passing alien's face look like Jessica's? And he hadn't even had a drink yet! Even water suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

"Just the bathroom then," he decided.

He stayed close to the walls, hoping that it was close to the exit so he wouldn't get lost on the way out. Around him, many different species of weird and unexplainable mashed into each other like mechanical love puppets. He passed an area covered with curtains, and he heard it—a woman sensually repeating Rick's name amidst the hushed grunting within. He felt bile rising in his throat. New plan: cover ears, piss, puke, then run the fuck away.

After what felt like an eternity of dizzying torture inside that hellish club, he emerged from the front door. He hiked back to where the ship was parked neatly beside the wall, among hundreds of others.

The stars were suddenly capable of holding his attention. He thought he could see the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt. Was that...a constellation spelling his name? Those weren't still the effects of the nauseating smoke inside, right? Nevertheless, his knees felt too stiff from standing guard by the ship for so long, and his eyes too heavy. No other patrons arrived, and the lot was mostly empty. It must be very late; it had been late to begin with. But as for sleeping inside the ship, it was out of the question, even if Morty could open the door. Rick had the key, and the engine (and therefore, the air-conditioner, which partially numbed his nose and dampened the odor) wouldn't start. With a grunt, Morty settled beside the wall, on the softest spot of ground which he hoped wasn't a sinkhole, nor toxic, nor dangerous in any way, aside from assaulting his nose (albeit much less than the inside of the ship).

 **~o0O0o~**

When Morty awoke this time, his body ached all over. The sun had barely broken through the horizon, but it felt like a long time since he had been asleep. _Odd_. Morty propped himself up on the wall next to him, and his hand landed on a large plastic bag of garbage. "Aww, man!" He had settled a few paces from the dump, but someone had laid trash bags beside him. "Am I like trash?!" He raised his fists at the unknown alien who had deemed him worthless. "Jerks!" he mumbled, and went on mentally badmouthing the alien as he stood up and stretched his arms and legs. When he looked ahead, he realized how wide the parking lot really was.

And that the ship was nowhere in sight.

Morty's stomach dropped, and his heart followed suit. "OH JEEZ!"

He sprinted past the corner (ten seconds) to the entrance of the club. The doors were bolted with heavy chains, and the windows were also locked. The bouncer was gone too.

Morty kicked the ground. "Stupid Rick, where the hell did he go...?" he asked the empty air. "He-he-he knew I was here, didn't he? _Didn't_ he?" Morty tried to remember the last conversation with Rick. Well, Rick had stoutly rejected him, with the warning to "keep it a secret" while singing that pathetic song. Likely, Rick was completely unaware that Morty had stowed away. Which had been the plan.

"I'm so stupid," he said, hanging his head.

The big orange sun rose slowly over the gray horizon. The comfortable coolness of the night was slowing fading to welcome a long, long day.

 **~-TO BE CONTINUED-~**


	2. A Normal Saturday

Chapter 2 - A Normal Saturday

Time is fleeting. Time is ethereal. Time is everything, and nothing, at once. Quantum and string theorists studies would flip their shit in four dimensions if they could know its secrets.

Such thoughts flicked in and out of Rick's half-conscious, alcohol-ridden mind. Even his superb liver had its limits, and a night out in Treicel brought Rick to his limits—although he was sure he'd overcome that limit and his body would be able to handle more liquor each time he met his favorite triplets. Gritting his teeth and trying to suppress the bile in his throat, he held the steering wheel as steadily as he could, and glided his ship along the wispy clouds in the lower troposphere.

The sky was light already, but the sun had not fully risen. Half of the proud, yellow sphere was still submerged beneath the faraway horizon. The houses below him were beginning to stir under the lenient warmth of the first days of summer. The lower he descended, the more birds joined him in the air, in search of food and green pastures amid the jungle of concrete that had taken over their paradise.

But for Rick, there were no birds, there was no sun: his mind was a blank haze, and as he burped, his knee jerked against the brakes. Suddenly the ship plummeted at a shocking diagonal toward the earth, bounced once, then skidded the rest of the way, dragging along the smooth asphalt, sparks flying, until it crashed into a white garage door.

Shaking violently, he kicked the ruined driver's side door and fell stomach-first on the driveway. Beside him, anonymous bottles rolled off the rough flooring of the ship, some rolling harmlessly toward his workstation, others breaking as it made contact with the earth. Before passing out, he noted with relief that at least he crashed at the right address. An excellent way to start to a boring Saturday.

 **~o0O0o~**

Beth awoke with a start. It wasn't her unwelcome alarm tone, but rather the jarring shock of the house receiving some otherworldly collision. She lay in bed, listening intently for more signs of an intruder, but she heard the clink of beer bottles meeting their demise on the solid ground, and instantly felt relief swim through her. Rick was home.

Jerry sat up groggily, rubbed his eyes, and looked around. He seemed satisfied that nothing was out of order in the bedroom, even muttered, "No burglars," before falling back asleep.

Beth sighed. Well, it was time to get up for work anyway.

It was a Saturday, but the hospital needed another pair of hands for a racehorse that was to be flown in that day for a kidney operation. Said racehorse was nothing special, constantly lost its races, and was quite addicted to chips, but its owner had promised to pay ludicrous sums of money to save his precious friend.

She mulled this over as she brushed her teeth and showered. The rest of the family would be gathered at the table just in time for her to finish cooking breakfast, and she'd be off to work. Another ordinary day.

 **~o0O0o~**

Rick kept to himself that morning, not even reacting as Jerry poked and prodded about the constantly rising electrical bill, the unexplainable—either glowing, screaming, or otherwise unsettling—mess that would crop up, not to mention the strange noises at ungodly hours of the morning. Jerry didn't seem to pick up on the fact that the old man was completely oblivious to the world around him, only groaning at intervals from under the pack of frozen peas he had used as a pillow.

"Leave him alone, dad," Summer finally defended Rick. However, this was more out of her waning focus on her news feed than concern for the old man; besides, he was the hardiest drunkard in the universe.

"And Jerry," Beth chimed in, "everyone has blunders. For instance, _someone_ deemed it necessary to replace our functioning sink with an overpriced 'steampunk' set."

Jerry cringed. "Will you let that go already? You already walked all over the only purchase I've made in a year! Do you really have to beat me up over this, again? You already made me feel like shit last night!"

" _Language_ , Jerry," glared Beth, "and I wouldn't need to repeat myself if you just did what I said."

"I am _not_ a carpet, Beth! I have feelings too, and those feelings have been trampled underfoot! I refuse to put back our sink. And I will curse and swear all I want because I live here! Your _amazing_ father swears like a sailor! Why doesn't he get this treatment?"

"I cannot believe such stubbornness from a grown adult!"

Rick coughed loudly, until all eyes were focused on him. "You two. Sh-shut up or I'll be forced to, to...I don't know, disintegrate the sink in question."

"Thank you!" Beth exclaimed, throwing her arms up. "I'm going to get dressed." With that, she stood from the table and exited the kitchen, hiding her flushed cheeks.

Jerry continued to mumble under his breath until well after Beth had slammed the front door behind her and driven away. They could hear her anger in the squealing of the tires as she faded from earshot. "Stupid Beth, stupid Beth..."

Summer granted him the same pity one would dispense for a starving child, one of the intellectual kind. She tore her glance from the two men at the table as she continued to absently push food around her plate. Even with Morty still brooding in his room, this was playing out to be quite a normal, stressful Saturday.

 **~o0O0o~**

The one hour that passed since Morty's waking felt more like a day. At least thrice had he removed his sweat-drenched shirt, only to don it once more as a defense against the searing sunlight, which, after his much extended sleep and his patient vigil outside the club, had still not fully risen over the horizon. And yet the temperature had soared significantly. If he only had his phone against which to check the time. Even if he couldn't have made a call to his family, he would've felt himself all the saner for having some form of entertainment, as long as its battery held up. Regrettably, the device was nowhere in his pockets. He had left it in the backseat of Rick's ship.

At the two hour mark, the star overhead, majestic due to its proximity, was nearly halfway over the broad arc of the horizon. No birdsong serenaded the confused, hyperventilating boy, nor did any insects crawl on his skin for companionship.

At three, the star's modest base was nearly visible. Now that the landscape at large was awash in its generous, scorching light, Morty could see dusty, barren soil stretching all the way from his lonely earthen throne to the edges of the planet. Was he the only form of life that breathed in this wide, solitary prison?

At six, Morty's eyes felt dry; his eyes, his skin, his ears, his hands, his feet, felt parched by the unforgiving sun's heat. It was hard to discern anything aside from the light that burned through his eyelids even as he sat, curled up and holding his breath, blanketed by the refuse and garbage by his wall.

As the last of his strength seeped out of him, he wished he were back home, waking up to a normal, boring Saturday.

 **~o0O0o~**

Up Next: Maybe they'll finally realize Morty is missing. _Maybe_.


	3. That Sinking Feeling

Chapter 3 - That Sinking Feeling

All of a sudden, Rick felt a change in room temperature, and a small cold knot in his stomach formed. It was subtle, in a way that manifests only when you realize something isn't quite right with the world.

He removed his goggles and swiveled in his chair, taking in the garage. He expected Morty to be hovering over him, or standing around the shelf, or doing his homework, or fiddling with his phone, or talking to himself (well aware that he was being fully ignored). But no Morty lingered. Strange... Wasn't school out already? Wasn't it summer break, or something that lazy school officials declared? He vaguely recalled Morty glumly making sculptures at the dinner table. Was the little shit still moping about...whatever he was moping about?

Rick put away his tools and proceeded into the adjacent room, where Beth's half-wit husband was pacing back and forth before the sink. A frantic, bewildered aura shrouded Jerry's features, and when his gaze landed on his beloved sink, he sighed aloud and muttered under his breath, "I just don't understand!"

Rick smirked as he watched the poor man soliloquize melodramatically:

"She's perfect! Thirty pounds of beautiful, stainless steel!" Jerry caressed the cold, unfeeling metal. His features reflected the subtle glow of the afternoon light on its sleek surface. "And her intelligent faucet automation!" Here he placed his open palm under the tap, which turned on in response. "I don't know why Beth would even look at her and not fall in love."

"Nope," thought Rick, retreating as hastily and silently as he could.

But Jerry spotted him at the last moment. "Rick, you have to help me! You can do it! Just do your science-y thing, and make it, I don't know, at least look like the old one..."

"Why don't you go take your paraphilia elsewhere," groaned Rick, "and I'll look for someone who isn't having a mental breakdown." With that, he pushed past the teary-eyed man and went into the living room, or tried to.

"No! I'm not just going to accept this!" cried Jerry. He ran past Rick and blocked the hallway. Flustered and sweating, he pointed a rigid finger at him. "You have to help me!"

"I'll pass." Rick pushed past him, circled around the couch, and plopped himself next to Summer, who was flicking through channels uninterestedly.

Jerry followed into the living room sheepishly. "Summer?" he pleaded. "Help me talk to Beth?"

"Ask Morty. He'll appreciate the distraction." She waved the remote in the general direction of Morty's room upstairs.

Rick sighed in relief, his former uneasiness completely forgotten. He reached inside his lab coat for his flask and unscrewed the cap. He drank deep and waited as the heat spread from his burning throat to the ends of his fingers and toes. "Ahhhh," he sighed aloud, content.

"HELP!"

The pair at the couch nearly fell in surprise. The yell came from upstairs, caught midway between shock and downright anger. Rick had barely collected himself, but Jerry had flown into him, shook him by the lapels of his lab coat, and asked wildly, "It's Morty! He's not in his room!"

The cold, uneasy feeling came rushing back to Rick. His vision clouded slightly. Gah! And he had just finally gotten rid of that horrible hangover.

Jerry loosened his grip and fell to his knees. "This can't be happening. Now I'm going to be in trouble for _two_ things!"

"Glad to see you're concerned about your son," Rick scoffed as he smoothed out his clothes.

"You're one to talk!" returned Jerry. "You're always involved when Morty gets into dangerous situations!"

" _When_ has Morty been hurt under my care?" Rick whirled to face Jerry. He drew himself to his full height and growled, _"When?"_

Jerry's resolve fizzled out under Rick's intense glare, but he held his ground, despite the floor refusing to vanish from beneath his feet. His confusion gave way to doubt, and before he even processed the thought, he asked, "You didn't take him out last night, did you?"

"No. I'll have you know I spent a splendid evening at the edge of the universe. I didn't want to tell anyone, but I was on a date, with three aliens who specialize in... Well, no one who hasn't seen _Backdoor Sluts 9_ can begin to fathom what those three can do to a man and his genitals," explained Rick, and with a distant look he recalled the festivities of the evening before.

"I don't think I want to know," Jerry winced. He started to relax, now that Rick was no longer hostile. "But, you didn't take him anywhere?"

"No really, Je-Jerry, I have nothing to do with this," Rick asserted tiredly. "I didn't take him out; h-h-he's just being a-a pathetic teenager."

"Morty was locked up in his room all night," piped Summer, recalling her brother's demeanor at the table last night. "He's probably just gone out for some air."

"Wh-what'd I tell ya? Pathetic." Rick shrugged. "Summer, call his phone to shut up your father."

Summer obliged eagerly. They watched her pull up her contacts list and press the entry with Morty's name and picture. She put the phone on loudspeaker; they listened to each ring with bated breath.

Another ring followed.

Then another.

One more—

An electronic voice cut through the static: _"Sorry, the number you have dialed is currently unattended. Please try again later."_

Jerry burst into panic again, cursing and grabbing his hair in fistfuls. Summer bit her lip and redialed the number. After fifteen seconds, the same message played.

 _"Please try again later."_

They continued to stare at Summer's phone, wearing confused faces. Scenarios, good and bad, but mostly worrisome, invaded their thoughts.

Jerry broke the merciless silence. "Rick, could you go look for him? I still have to deal with Beth and the sink issue...I won't let her know about Morty until you give word."

Rick cast him a tired gaze. "Why do I gotta do everything around here? Just because you got your own problems? I got ninety-nine problems—" He bit his lip and suppressed the next phrase, "and Morty isn't one of them." He shook his head, wondering at the rattling ache in his chest.

"You two are idiots!" cried Summer. She threw her phone on the couch; it bounced off the pale blue leatherette and landed harmlessly on the soft carpet by the coffee table. She had already stomped off upstairs before it fell.

Rick emerged from his reverie. "Fine, I'll do it. And when I find your son, that'll be the last favor you get from me."

 **~o0O0o~**

Summer walked back and forth past the plain white door in the middle of the second floor. She had never felt such trepidation before barging into the room beyond.

But today was different. Somehow, fog had filled her chest and it was hard to breathe. Why? Morty wasn't probably in danger, right? Rick had said so. And if he didn't take Morty out, then Morty was only capable of getting into normal trouble. _If_ Rick didn't take Morty out... _if_ Rick was to be trusted on that account. She had witnessed the man's repeated abuse of Morty. But that was just tough love, right? Rick loved Morty, right? (Rick _could_ love, right?)

She shut her eyes tightly before pushing the door open.

The room was empty.

She exhaled; the relief that washed over her made her knees go weak. There was no body hanging from the ceiling, or the window ledge. She searched his bedside drawer briefly, then under his pillow. She pulled off the sheets.

No running-away letter, no suicide letter.

She didn't know why she was expecting the worst. Morty wasn't _that_ stupid. She sat on the bed and tried to inhale deeply. The fog wasn't clearing; her chest was heavy with worry. "I guess I do have the feminine instinct. I just hope I'm wrong," she said to no one.

The door was still ajar. She saw Rick saunter past and call into the hallway, "Summer, I need you to come with—huh?" She heard his uneven footsteps zigzag toward Morty's room, watched him open the door with a similar trepidation as she had, and for that moment, she was relieved: relieved that Rick had half a heart about caring for Morty's safety.

"Yes", she replied before he repeated the question. "I'll help you find Morty."

 **~o0O0o~**

Morty phased into and out of consciousness, borne partially of his hope that maybe someone had already noticed he wasn't at home. He wished he could track the time he had spent there already, but between the lethargic sun and his depleting energy, staying awake to even count the days became impossible.

How long had it been? Had he been withering here for days? Weeks? He looked up wearily, and the strain on his eyes to move into position electrified him with pain. The orange sun floated languidly over a gray sky tinged with green, but it was still not at his zenith. Not even a day on this wrathful planet. The colors made his head spin, and he blacked out again.

He felt like he was dying. His hunger had passed a lifetime ago, but his thirst was unbearable. He was sure he would have licked his sweat if he had known how dry the torpid days were, and he wished he could drink his own piss if there were any left.

Now he was starting to see things. A blue line—moving across the arid landscape. When he next awoke, the shape, dark against the harsh sunlight overhead, was leaning over him in apparent observation. When their eyes met, its gaze softened and its lips turned upward into what Morty dared to hope was a smile.

* * *

A/N: South Park reference! xD

Up Next: Is the blue creature friend or foe? Morty's gonna find out!


	4. Hope(less)

Chapter 4 - Hope(less)

There was little Summer could do, other than curl up and hug her knees in the passenger seat in Rick's ship. The engine whined loudly as it bore them up into space in the span of five minutes. Sounding at its limit, it chugged along brokenly under Rick's drunken hand.

"Th-there's not a lot of places Morty could be," Rick explained, seeing that Summer cared little to inquire where they were going. At least Morty asked a lot of questions, even if he was dumb as they came. Morty seemed genuinely curious about the universe, whereas Summer was overcome by the slightest worry that her brother was hurt. "Not a lot of places that could be harmful to a mindless fourteen-year-old, you know."

If she responded in any way, Rick didn't catch it, so he contented himself to deliberate the course of their search.

"He can't have gone beyond this dimension since he didn't take this," and here Rick patted his pockets, where the portal gun was tucked safely. "And then as for getting off the planet itself, not a lot of people he could talk to. I count one." Rick smirked and pointed to himself with his thumb.

Summer cast him a doleful glance. "So where are we going?"

"A few places here and there." Rick counted on his fingers. "Two, three—" he tipped up the flask, "—maybe six places we can check. Close by. No breaking physics required."

"And we really can't just portal into those six places? Wouldn't it be faster that way?"

"He can wait. Serves Morty right for running away in the first place, giving...giving you and your father a scare," Rick scoffed. He glanced at Summer. "What's got you so concerned, anyhow?"

Summer pursed her lips. She shook her head. Honestly, she had no idea why her chest constricted that way. It had the weight of absolute gloom; it stilled her tongue and stifled her apathy. "I don't know."

There was no reason to worry about Morty. They were on their way, weren't they? And he had only been gone for...a few hours? She exhaled. "I'm gonna go take a nap in the back," she said as she climbed over to the back seat.

 **~o0O0o~**

Really, Rick wasn't too deeply concerned. On his own, Morty may be defenseless, but he wasn't anything special. He must have gone off-world with some help (from one of Rick's own friends—those bastards, helping a foolish kid on a whim), but none of his contacts owned up to the task. He had called everyone from Squanchy to the Glipglops, to the most lively of the bunch, the Gearmen, who were just _lovely_ to talk to and made one feel reeeeally good about having a set of ears. Right. Well, none of them knew anything, and as far as Rick could tell, they had no reason to lie. Unless Morty was planning something. Or running away from something. The possibilities were endless, and the more Rick considered it, the more fruitless he thought their search might be.

So why bother?

The boy had a knack for trouble, Rick thought glumly, which didn't suit his rose-colored view of the world at large. There were myriad predators scattered across the universe, who'd jump at the easy prey that Morty presented. And not to mention, the Federation was always on high alert for Rick; if they found out that Morty was related to him by blood, there was no telling what dangers the boy would be in.

So why the hell bother?

Because losing Morty would endanger his free rent, free food, free working space; the loss of his daughter's respect (and the deepening of his son-in-law's baseless grudge); not to mention the end of his own safety during interstellar and interdimensional travel?

That was all Morty meant to him. To subdue the other protesting voices in his head, he guzzled more of his favorite, cursed drink.

An ear-piercing shriek from Summer made him drop his flask. Rick turned back, ready to give her a piece of his mind, but what she held in front of his face made him pale: it was Morty's phone, whose red warning light was flashing to signal its low battery.

"He was here, Rick! This is his phone, among your _junk!"_ cried Summer, "You can't deny it anymore. This is on you! You're responsible for this! He was here! Did you try to get rid of Morty? What the hell did he do to you?! What the heck could Morty do to a guy to deserve this! Why would you cover it up! Or did you simply just not remember?!"

And then everything came to a stop—Summer's hysterical whining, the loudly whirring engines, the continual background music in his mind, the lights, the air:

 _"Rick! I need to talk to you."_

 _"HEY!"_

 _"Rick, for real, I need to talk to you."_

A haze of an excuse. That was what he had told the boy. He thought Morty wanted to leave for somewhere. But those pleas, whatever they were, fell on deaf ears, as Rick himself, already half-drunk, was preparing to meet his dates that night. Those humanoid aliens were solitary creatures, and his hosts were rare on at least three accounts: first, because they were friendly; second, because they were triplets, in a species that commonly bore one child to be left to die after birth, that survived their hostile, subterranean ice world; and finally, because they usually remained in heat for more than a day, which was more than enough for Rick's needs...

Their meeting place had been carefully chosen for the rendezvous, in the far outskirts of the universe, far away from the reaches of the Galactic Federation, so he didn't need Morty to join him. Besides, Treicel was a hostile desert world, whose gravity well slowed time to a crawl, so that a minute on Earth may be hours on Treicel. No creatures lived there permanently; they only came to visit the one establishment in the entire planet.

Of all the fucking places Morty could've been. _Shit._

 **~o0O0o~**

"My name is Luria. I am not going to hurt you."

Morty had no willpower to retort or even to question whatever it said. It waited for some moments, but when Morty gave no resistance, it picked him up with cold, balmy fingers and carried him like a baby around the corner. It opened the door—Morty heard the metal lock click open heavily—and the harsh, bright sunlight evaporated, taking with it the eternal orange-white that had etched itself into Morty's eyelids permanently. It passed the large, vacant dance area and the main bar, entered a gloomy hall and an equally gloomy chamber hidden behind pearl-colored sheer curtains, and lay Morty down gently on soft, velvet cushions on the floor.

The cold fingers left him to retrieve something from the bar. Morty opened his eyes weakly and discerned that he was in some dingy back room. He found a boarded window, probably the same one he observed from outside, barring sunlight, fresh air, and any intruders. His head swam lightly. He recalled the euphoric smoke from the last time he was here, but it had largely dissipated. Only traces remained which made the shadows dance and the shapes in the darkness grin up at him.

The room itself smelled vaguely like something organic, something foul and unwashed. The door was made of thick wood and adorned on both sides by gilded curtains.

They parted to admit the blue creature. It presented a platter of what looked like mashed bread and a jug of translucent green liquid. Morty lifted his head and looked at it longingly. "Eat," the creature urged him, handing him a tin cup with the juice. He wasted no time in accepting the offer.

The creature, Luria, contented itself to sit by the door, watching through a narrow crack for any other intruders in the establishment. "You must have been abandoned to die," she said conversationally. "Were you a slave?"

Morty stopped mid-bite and looked squarely at the creature for the first time since regaining his energy. It—she?—had mostly a humanoid shape, but with gelatinous skin, and luminescent white orbs for eyes. Her white hair flowed down her back, waving even with the influence of air. Her similarly translucent robe moved freely, as though underwater, reflecting light like the bodies of jellyfish. She vaguely looked like something Morty might have seen before, but as for what it was, he couldn't put his finger on it.

The most confusing part about watching her "speak" was that she never opened her lips at all, and yet Morty heard her "voice" reverberating inside his head, loud and clear, as if she was talking right next to him even as she sat respectfully by the door five feet away.

He shook his head.

"Oh, then, a prisoner?" Luria inquired, cocking her head to the side. Her lips were still motionless.

"I," Morty sighed, "I wasn't a prisoner. But it felt like I was one, anyway."

Luria frowned, but there was compassion in her features. "Your captor was especially cruel, then, to have left you on Treicel of all places. But, you are safe now. I represent a movement which fights for the freedom of any and all."

"Like-like-like the police?"

"No. I am not in league with the Galactic Federation; they are a bunch of asses on four to eight legs!" Luria's face became inflamed with passion. "No, I am a vigilante, who fights for freedom of my species, and any others, who have been maltreated, oppressed, used, or abused in any manner. In fact, my duty to my poor sisters, who have been brought here to perform uncouth services for a loathsome man, was what brought me here. Only on this account do I agree with the Federation: I have long known that the infamous Rick Sanchez frequents this place, but I shall be damned before I let him touch any one of the Flooble! He was to meet the famous Wija, Vija, and Lija, on this planet, according to my sources. Unhappily, I find that I am too late to save them."

She paused and looked away, sighing for her "sisters".

"In any case, I consider it lucky that I can give succor to someone who needs it." Saying thus, she gave Morty a warm, motherly smile. "We shall await nightfall, when more customers wander to this cursed planet. Then we shall seek out someone to take you back home."

Morty bit into his cheek. He felt blood filling his mouth, soaking his half-chewed bread. Sweat dripped down his brow. His throat refused to swallow.

* * *

Up Next: Will Rick and Summer make it in time?


	5. A Dying Star

Chapter 5 - A Dying Star

Another Earth-long day must have trickled by, if Morty were to judge based on his need for food and sleep. There were now three empty trays of crumbs and a long row of used jugs and glasses, each stained by the drink they used to contain. (There had not been much variety in the shelf, and the kitchen area had only dirty cookware from the previous day's preparations.) Morty peeked out through a crack in the boarded windows, a mean feat for a crack so small: but it was enough to allow him to see that the great orange sun had dipped a tiny fraction of its belly into the horizon once more. At last, the long day on Treicel was coming to its long-awaited close.

Then Morty peeked at Luria, who kept her post guarding the curtained door. She hadn't moved at all even when Morty stepped past her (respectfully) to use the bathroom. She seemed to sleep sometimes, and she ate only what leftovers Morty offered. Her favorite occupation during the endless day was droning on and on in her telepathic voice about "how awful it is that Rick Sanchez roams the universe _as we speak_ , possibly molesting as many women as he has hair!" She went tangentially about her job, but she seemed to enjoy it best to torture Rick as a thought experiment, such as, "Oh how I'd love to see his entrails hanging on my wall", and "do you think he would scream in pain if I...", and that point, Morty refused to listen any longer to her rambling. She would have been good company, really, if not for that.

Now that he was no longer hungry or dying of thirst (not mention skin cancer), he waited by the window, watching the light drain from the orange-tinged sky, which reminded him of sunsets on Earth, and how he missed his bedroom, and his phone, and his non-existent friends, if only he had them. What was Summer doing? Had anyone realized that he was gone? (Will they ever?)

At that thought, he saw a black dot manifest against the sky. He could be mistaken, but one good influence Rick had had on him was his recognition of spacecraft from afar. And as he watched, he counted a few more dots coming into the atmosphere, heading toward—dare he hope?—the only piece of livable space in this desert. His heart did a somersault, and a grin, wide and childlike, such as hasn't appeared in days, spread wide across his face.

 **~o0O0o~**

Rick's demeanor took on a sudden change at that moment, and his countenance hinted at something dark and disturbing. He rigidly turned back to the wheel, switched on "hyper light speed", and pushed the throttle as far as it could go. The drifting stars around them became white blurs against the background of infinity playing out in an instant.

It was over in a heartbeat. Rick flipped off the speed boost and they found themselves in orbit of the lonely planet Treicel.

"Are we here?" asked Summer, observing the rather large planet. It was a massive, monotonous gray landmass, broken neither by mountains nor crags nor oceans, but by a solitary white speck sitting in the middle of its bare face. When Rick didn't answer, she repeated, "Is Morty here?"

Rick sat back in the driver's seat and let his hands fall to the side. A twitch in his fingers betrayed a desire to drown himself in liquor and absolve himself from this responsibility. With great perseverance did he ignore the metal container on his lap, and directed Summer's gaze to another ship approaching the planet. In fact, there were about five more ships in orbit, yet too far to be seen by the naked eye.

"I remember when I first found this planet by mistake. Purely coincidental. I was high off...something, well, five somethings, more likely," Rick began to recount, his eyes glazed over. "I was with a few friends. We scouted out the place. It was evening too, so there were other people. I found out why: it's too hot whenever its sun is out."

Summer watched the other ship descend into the planet. Before long, another ship appeared. Spacecraft of different sizes seemingly materialized out of nowhere. She realized that's how they must have appeared too, to any observers.

Rick remained motionless as he spoke, "It was a fucking party! We stayed the night, but after we got out, I realized almost a week had gone by. It could be the toxic air, or an intense gravity well. Not that I detected either. This planet is fucked up in so many ways. The sun's about to die on it too. Look at that mess of a star, trying to keep it together. It can't. It won't for long." As he said it, a large solar flare erupted from its great orange surface, its flaming tendrils reaching through the vacuum to caress Treicel.

"Shouldn't we get down there?" Summer said through her teeth. "I thought we were in a hurry!"

"Before we go, get yourself a gas mask. You don't want to be breathing in that air." Rick fixed his gaze on the white dot. "A-and one for Morty, assuming he's still alive."

"NO! He's alive!" Summer wanted to stand up and storm off; she'd rather jump from this height right now than deal with this languid Rick and his banal excuses, his roundabout storytelling, his cruel, cruel nonchalance. "Bring us down there right now! I'm not taking your crap anymore!"

"Morty wasn't either." Now Rick looked at her directly, his eyes clear. He scrutinized her as one would a microscopic specimen. "He wanted out too. And looked what happened to him. _Nobody_ messes with Rick."

"Bullshit! Enough!" Summer jumped at Rick and grabbed at the wheel. "If we're not landing, we're _crashing!_ "

"You stupid—and how do you get out?"

"What do you mean? We have the portal gun!"

"No, _I_ have the portal gun," Rick said, relinquishing control of the wheel. They jerked in space. Summer glared at him. He smirked and sunk his foot into the gas pedal. They hurtled downward into the desert, toward the only spot of color in the land. "Once this is over, you know, I'm not going back with you. It's all you guys wanted, isn't it?"

(Back on Earth, Jerry felt a deep chill in his spine. Was someone talking shit about him somewhere?)

"Fuck you, Rick! You never wanted to rescue Morty! If you want to wallow, do it yourself!" shrieked Summer. She tried to pull him off the driver's seat, which was surprisingly easy, considering his underweight frame and a startling lack of conviction. He crumpled motionlessly on the floor at her feet. Muttering under her breath, she stepped over him gingerly and steadied the wheel. It surprised her how easily she was able to guide the old ship guide downward in a long, gentle sweep. The dot was close now; only, it wasn't a dot, but a wide, single-floor clubhouse, with dead neon lights that would be blinding, had they been turned on.

A few other ships were already parked there; she found a spot near the back wall, in front of a dark, boarded-up window.

Summer exhaled gruffly in disbelief. It was that easy, and Rick couldn't do it. She cast an incredulous glance at her grandfather, but for not longer than a second. She reached toward the bag in the backseat floor to look for whatever might pass for a weapon. After a bit of rummaging through the mess, she found a pair of gas masks (presumably one for Morty and one for Rick, as was the usual setup) and a laser gun. She kicked open the door and hopped out, itching for a fight.

 **~o0O0o~**

Then, light pierced the dark interior of the club, temporarily blinding Luria, who unblinkingly watched the double-doors through a thin crack between her curtains. She waited to see if Morty noticed, but the boy was fixated on something beyond the boarded windows. By and by, his look of relief shifted into one of despair. He fidgeted anxiously, looking between the deadly outside world and their small pocket of safety.

Luria was barely able to conceal her laughter behind a false cough. "I am going out to greet the new guests, and ask them if we may get a ride to your planet."

Morty's tension loosened somewhat; he was glad that she would give him time alone. The boy was such an open book, it delighted Luria to no end. She especially loved watching his horrified expressions as she described the tortures she dreamed of impressing on her worst enemy.

Not to mention, telepathy worked two-way. And he still had no idea.

 **~o0O0o~**

Around ten more ships were in descent toward the building, and they each looked like small shuttles. The previously-deserted planet was now becoming crowded, at least, at the entrance of its one facility. As Summer paced quickly along the dirty white walls to the main entrance, she found faces of many different kinds, but none of them was her brother's.

At the entrance itself stood a burly, six-armed alien, muscular all over and perhaps twice as tall as Rick. "Please wait, everyone," he called at intervals in different tongues, "We'll open soon, as soon as we get the supplies in order."

Indeed, several deliverymen made their way back and forth from the cargo ship parked near them to the unlit interior, bearing crates of food and wine for the long night ahead.

But behind the bouncer, a pair of smaller aliens were inspecting the wide double-doors. The rusty silver knobs had been pried off and were covered in thick blue globules. This same substance left tracks all the way to the silent darkness inside.

"We're going in," announced one of the inspectors, "Probably a...a 'seismic event' of some sort. We'll just check if it's safe." The other agreed slowly.

It was a front, an obvious one, enough to make Summer roll her eyes: there had been a break-in, but they didn't want to lose business today. It was made clear when another alien with the same three pairs of arms, yet smaller and bustier, tapped her foot impatiently.

"Oh _come on_ , Joel! We'll just start up the lights and warm up the fryer. No seismic event would deter these lovely young folk from a good, long dance and some wine! And don't you 'no' me, young man, or I'll not give you your wages today."

"But _mooom!"_ wailed the bouncer. He groaned and stepped aside to let her in. "Be careful," he whispered after her, and to Summer, somehow he didn't seem so scary anymore.

She made to follow them, but Joel blocked her with a smooth, lean arm. "Sorry, miss. Just a few more moments."

Summer pushed back, but the six arms were stronger than all of her efforts. She sighed gruffly as Joel pushed her gently back among the crowd. The crowd... "I think it's just my brother," she tried, but Joel's stern brows didn't soften. "He was stranded here last night!" Now there were several sympathetic gasps; she knew her case was sold.

Joel exhaled and shook his head. "Okay, go and look. If you find him, ask my mother for a drink. I take responsibility for closing up when someone was still here," he admitted. "Horrible thing to be stranded here, but it happens once a while. Poor fools usually die within hours."

Summer's appalled face said more than words could, and Joel backed off in shame. He bowed his head and motioned with his left arms for her to enter.

Joel's mother was already flicking on the various switches behind the counter as Summer entered, and the place came to life instantly: the gloom filled with flickering multicolored lights, and a sickly sweet smoke hissed from every corner in the ceiling, creating a dizzying fog of euphoria. Summer's head swam, and for a brief moment, the lights and shadows made faces at her, danced around her, whispered needy, lustful phrases—

A door opened to her left, breaking the spell. It was one of the inspecting guards, emerging from one of the halls leading from the wide dance floor. "West-wing rooms are clear," he called solemnly. His partner appeared from a corridor next to the bar, announcing the same for the kitchen and storage.

Summer held her breath in this short space of lucidity to pull on her gas mask. The air wasn't poison: it was a drug!

The pair of guards went abreast to the east hall, the third to branch out from the dance area. Shabby tables and thin sofas stood arbitrarily along the sides of the club, making a maze out of the room, while the bar, from which Joel's mother hummed gaily as she wiped the counters, sat on the back wall furthest from the entrance. Summer observed the west hall: the rooms had only thin veils or at times no concealment at all. There on the east wing, however, she could see fine, oak-like doors, thick and varnished and trimmed in gold, hidden behind sheer, glittering curtains.

Summer made to follow the guards after she'd recovered from the toxic air, but it was lucky that she hadn't caught up: a blue lady, clad in a long, translucent robe which flashed in different colors, emerged from behind the last door and, wielding curved twin blades, cut both the guards in quick succession. Four bleeding alien halves fell to the floor loudly. The blue lady, white eyes glinting, turned over the bodies with her foot. "Dead so quickly? Pity." She emerged from the hall and hissed at Joel's mother, who hopped over the bar and ran outside, screaming out of her wits.

Summer had never ducked behind a couch faster in her life. She covered her mouth with both hands, only to find that her arms, and her entire body, trembled too hard for that tactic to be effective.

 **~o0O0o~**

Up Next: "It happened so fast..."


	6. (e)motion

Chapter 6 - (e)motion

"Wh-wha-what the fuck, Luria!" cried Morty, "Why would you...? Y-y-you _killed_ them!"

He knelt before the fallen guards at Luria's feet and checked each of their halves for a pulse, a breath, any sign of life, but the flowing green blood, in which they bathed and which stained Morty's ruined shoes, continued to leak, as did the light in their small, gray eyes.

Morty looked up at Luria, then around at the open dance floor, in all its haphazard glory: strobe lights blinking and stuttering, frantic music that matched his heartbeat, a smoky haze that made his head swim despite his best efforts to remain calm. The front doors stood wide open, abandoned, but outside he could see chaos, people—aliens—running away in terror. _Bum bum bum bum_ went the loud bass, and Morty, through tear-glossed eyes, watched his false protector turn her beautiful blue swords upon him. She looked absolutely stunning in the mesmerizing lights, but his heart felt the danger, and his gut wanted to expel what few contents it had.

Summer steeled herself through the tears and forced herself to stop shaking. She needed to get to Morty and give him the gas mask. Then she'd need to get him away from that horrible blue woman... But first things first. She peeked beyond the couch at Luria: the latter was facing the other direction and threatening Morty with twin Khopeshes. Summer took in a deep breath and tried to steady her hands enough to aim the laser gun.

"You like my swords?" asked Luria; Morty seemed arrested by her curved blades. She grinned brightly as she traced imaginary lines with them, and Morty's eyes trailed them languidly, hypnotized by the electric blue metal. "Pure sapphire. Not the sharpest, but they cut what I ask them to."

"I..." Morty blinked hard, and he seemed to win his mental battle, temporarily. "I...thought you helped people," he said quietly. "I-I-I th-thought you were helping me."

Luria offered an innocent smile and gave both swords an agile sideward flick, which cleaned off the blood, before training them on Morty again. "Those men couldn't bring us."

"You didn't even ask them, you—"

"I did," she interrupted sharply. "In their lives, they had only heard of Earth from the regular patron who frequents this den of pleasures. And in the history of their species, as told by their DNA, their miniscule brain cells are well-honed for extracting gratification for labor. They would have said 'yes' to taking us to Earth, but for the price of taking me bodily!"

Morty paled. "You can...read minds?"

For the first time, Luria opened her mouth and howled with laughter. Her real voice was terrifying—a high-pitched chorus of furious, demonic shrieking; it was crude and deafening, as though a hundred enraged spirits haunted her vocal chords in unison. The sound alone made Morty's sweat run cold. He now understood why she chose telepathy as a medium in the first place.

Luria wiped a tear with her sleeve. "Of course. You really are as stupid as your cells proclaim. I knew it within coming five feet of you: your lineage, your people's history, all your faults and secrets and petty hopes. Like the fact that my enemy's ship has finally arrived, and your wench of a sister is hiding behind that couch."

Morty turned his head at the startled gasp from behind one of the club's sofas.

Summer stood on shaking knees and stepped out of her cover to point the laser gun at Luria. "Don't hurt him," she threatened, hoping she looked the part; her own voice sounded no more intimidating than an infant's babbling.

Smirking, Luria faced Summer; she turned one of her twin blades to nod at the human girl. "Now you, my dear, you are less naive than your brother."

"You're right. I _have_ killed before," and Summer fired a warning shot at the Flooble's feet. The floor was charred at that single point; the smell of burning wood mixed with the enthralling drug in the air.

Luria flipped back her hair and scoffed. "You are a child. Clean and no smarter than a suckling babe." She took one long stride toward Summer and, in a swift motion, knocked the laser gun off her hands with the dull edge of the Khopesh. The gun clanged loudly against the metal legs at the counter. "Now tell me, why has your grandfather not appeared yet? Has he lost his nerve on the way here?" She paused, looking as though she was reading the answer right out of Summer's head. "...No! Do not say! He has! After all these years, to think this hell would be the place that broke him!"

Morty swallowed a sob and looked imploringly at his sister. "Really...?"

Summer could only avoid his gaze.

 **~o0O0o~**

Five minutes ago.

Rick had remained motionless for the better part of an hour. He never used the masks on this planet; the air, while toxic, numbed his mind. He could run a marathon and still enjoy the poison in his lungs. Morty, though...

It wasn't like Rick to linger on anything for longer than a minute. But leaving Morty behind, almost getting him killed—if he wasn't dead already—let's just face it: he was still only a child. And Rick may be many things, a monster included, but he was not heartless. Morty occupied a soft spot that he thought he'd lost long ago. Those things he forced himself to think—that Morty was nothing but a shield, disposable—they couldn't be true. Why then was this regret still not evaporating?

His eyes fell on a tiny spot of red light blinking on the ship's floor. Morty's phone. Rick hummed in thought. Maybe he could charge it using the ship's microverse battery. Maybe that'd give it enough juice for a short email. Maybe that would be a good-enough goodbye.

But then he heard that laughter... It was a Flooble's voice; he would know: after one utterly drunk session with Lija, he had begged her to reveal her true voice. He had never heard an Aeolian scream before or since that forlorn evening when his ears bled and his mind was reduced to a pacified, permanently subdued state when in the presence of her kind.

Rick dropped Morty's phone and blinked in surprise. Flooble never wandered to this place, even with his invitation, with many lures and promises of payment, security, and a good time. His triplets were wary of a planet so hot and so out-of-the-way. This was an enemy, the regular, primal hunter type.

He had to leave. It was too late; he had already abandoned Morty. Summer wouldn't be a terrible loss; she became bossy at the wrong time, got too angry, or lost reason at her worst.

There were infinite versions of them.

He sat up and reached mechanically into his lab coat pocket for the portal gun. He shot a portal into the ground just outside the still-open driver side door. He wasn't drunk anymore, had lost that hangover hours ago, and his head was clear, really clear for the first time in perhaps decades. And it insisted: _this pair is still alive_.

Reluctantly, he pushed another button that made the portal shrink until it vanished completely. He may have given up on himself, but he wasn't going to give up on Morty ever again.

 **~o0O0o~**

Now that Luria's back was turned on him, Morty thought it best to dive for the gun. Even if the counter was a few steps away from the hall entrance, where they stood, he'd probably be faster than Luria.

He tried to catch Summer's eyes to communicate the plan, but before he could even begin to look at her, Luria had spun around and driven her left blade into his right shoulder, fixing him, through torn flesh and broken bone, into the wall.

"I can _read_ your minds, you hopeless idiot!" Luria hissed as Morty struggled against the restraint in vain.

With all his strength, he grabbed her robes and forced her to look at him directly. "Leave us alone... You can have Rick, really; I hate him too."

It did nothing to hinder her, really, but it was more than amusing. "I see now that my bait is disobedient, and will suffer anything to get home, even bequeath his grandfather's head on a platter for me. A turncoat! For shame! You were a more docile hostage when starving and close to death."

Meanwhile, Summer, driven by adrenaline, took the opportunity to run for the laser gun, but Luria extended a long, blue leg in her path, tripping her inches away from the weapon.

"Just how dumb are you two?" Luria demanded impatiently, turning to berate the girl. "Didn't I just say—"

Summer managed to kick her way out of Luria's gelatinous legs for a moment; she dashed madly for the gun and was able to fire a direct shot at Luria's abdomen. The Flooble cried in surprise; the white eyes screamed betrayal as her body writhed in absolute pain in front of Morty. It lasted a good long minute before the harrowing shrieks died down to nothing.

Summer let the sheer relief wash over her as she fell to her knees, watching the dying Flooble. She was startled by the sound of clapping from the main entrance, where Rick's silhouette, leaning tiredly on the door frame, was visible.

"Let's go home," whispered the apparition. And when this ghost walked in nonchalantly, as if Summer and Morty hadn't almost been killed, Summer blinked in disbelief, and in equal incredulity, she stood on shaking knees and ran toward him gratefully—

Suddenly her back was submerged in searing pain. Luria had rolled onto her stomach and was laughing once more, a sinister witch-like cackle. Her blue sword, the one not currently attaching Morty to the wall, was drenched in warm human blood. Summer gurgled a faltering threat, but felt her breath was forever stolen by her graceless fall. Darkness took her immediately.

"You dare show your face now, Rick Sanchez?" inquired Luria. She stood up and exposed her belly; her robes were seared at a single point, but her blue skin remained unblemished. She cast a peripheral glance at the motionless boy beneath her: a fresh, brimming puncture wound decorated Morty's already blood-stained and sweat-dyed shirt. She sneered at Rick, saying, "You are too late for forgiveness, for salvation—you must die!"

Rick growled as he ducked the wide slice Luria made with her sword. The Flooble jumped over Rick, but he crawled quickly toward the laser gun by Summer's hand. "Not yet, bitch! Have at me!" he called as he rolled under a nearby table and flipped it sideways for cover.

With another bound, Luria was hanging from the ceiling, eyeing her target hungrily. "I will avenge every Flooble you've ever touched, you monster!" She threw her remaining Khopesh at the flimsy table. It connected with the smooth wooden surface with a loud crack, and its tip, buried halfway through, missed Rick by centimeters.

"So that's what you wanted? Revenge? For whores?" Rick yelled hoarsely. He heard her groan in frustration. He could track her with ease by sound alone, thanks to the excessive creaking from the metalwork holding up the disco balls overhead. But she was incredibly nimble, and will very likely survive a ranged attack; the speed with which she rose to cut Summer's back was proof enough. He didn't see it coming. He had to get her closer. "Is that any worse than using my grandchildren as hostages?"

"I chose the lesser evil, Rick Sanchez," came the reply, along with a barrage of ceiling lights, speakers, electrical wires, other tables, and glassware. Rick's table finally gave way; he scrambled to find new cover and found safety behind Summer's previous couch.

The moment he peeked out from the couch's edge, Luria, fangs bared and mad with frenzy, stretched out her hands and grabbed his neck hungrily. She couldn't raise him above the ground with her strength, but she took solace in the tinge of blue on his face. "And since when did you care for..." she grinned as she read the images in Rick's mind, "this stupid, annoying Morty, and this arrogant Summer?"

Eyes narrowing, Rick pressed a cold metal into her stomach.

"Now, now! You forget that your lasers are futile against my body," Luria drawled, tightening her clutch on his larynx. She kneed Rick on the crotch, earning a delightful groan of pain from the old man. "Go, gently, into your goodnight."

"This...isn't...a laser gun!" Rick forced the words. He directed Luria's eyes with his own toward the counter, where the laser gun was still abandoned next to Summer's open hand. He pulled the trigger; he got to flash a fuck-you smile at Luria before a dense green light bloomed within her body. As the portal took shape, her cells began to fluctuate between "here" and "there", destroying the gelatin she was made of. The portal consumed her entirely, leaving none but smoke and the strong scent of burnt hair.

Now unsupported, Rick fell on his hands and knees and sputtered as he tried to regain his breath. His heart was beating loudly in his ears, and his neck continued to throb painfully.

It happened so fast. He had dodged Luria's swift attacks entirely by chance, and it was pure luck that she'd been so excited about killing him that she neglected to read his mind, or at least the right part of it. She was too arrogant to have challenged him. _Nobody messes with Rick_ , he thought glumly. By instinct, he reached into his lab coat pocket and stopped just before he found the space devoid of its one, faithful burden.

No. Not anymore.

Rick inspected Summer: her torn blouse revealed a long, clean cut along her spine. The wound didn't look very deep; blood flowed slowly, but with emergency care, a good, long sleep, and probably some strong brandy, she'll pull through without issue.

Rick crawled over to Morty. The boy looked shaken, dried up, battered; his breath came in shallow, desperate puffs. To have lived through nearly a whole day in Treicel, at the hands of that lunatic Flooble! Morty had a lion's will, but the body of a little pup.

Rick knelt in front of him somberly. Placing a hand against his chest, Rick gripped the sword and dislodged it from the wall. Morty gasped in pain, and his eyes fluttered open, bloodshot and pained.

"R-Rick...?" he squeaked. All at once, there was anger, despair, and confusion on his face, and Rick couldn't breathe for a moment as he held the dying child's gaze.

Rick dropped the blade to catch Morty's body as it finally slumped forward, unconscious once more. His wounds were severe: but he'll recover. A day's worth of food would be good for him. A day's rest. A day without Rick. A lifetime without Rick.

Morty will be fine.

 **~o0O0o~**

Up Next: One more chapter to close this fic; if it gets too long, I'll split the last bits off into an epilogue. xD


	7. Inertia

Chapter 7 - Inertia

A voice.

Summer stirred lightly. Cotton muffled her hearing. She felt heavy, and tired, and suffocated.

The voice called louder.

Was it God? But didn't Rick repeatedly insist that there was no such thing as god?

And finally, the voice—Rick's voice—broke through. "SUMMER!"

Summer gasped as reality sharply insinuated itself into her consciousness. She recalled where she was, but as her eyes finally adjusted, she could no longer recognize the former dance floor, now littered with dust and debris, which made the long cut on her back sting severely. No more were the wild lights; they were shrouded in twilight darkness, and around her, the grimy scents of a losing fight pervaded her senses: centuries worth of dust, disturbed; traces of the toxic drug; alien blood. She peeled off the gas mask, threw it off to a side, and instantly regretted it, if not for the relatively "fresher" air compared to when she had worn it.

She got up laboriously, ignoring the hot pain in her back. Following the grating voice to its source, she found Rick cradling Morty next to the wall, his back turned to her.

"Rick," she breathed.

Rick turned partly to her, and something in his mien chilled Summer: what might have been melancholy or rage shrouded the hard eyebrows, making him look older, feeble.

"Let's go," he said, "Federation will be swarming here soon; no doubt Joel has called for help after hearing the Flooble's war cry."

As he hoisted Morty up into his arms and led the way outside, Summer realized for the first time that he hadn't been stuttering, twitching, nor walking in zigzags.

 **~o0O0o~**

Jerry stared hard at the phone, which innocently reposed on its hook on the kitchen wall. He brimmed with excitement at the prospect of calling Beth and letting her know that Rick got Morty in trouble again: and then Beth's anger would be redirected elsewhere, _and_ he could keep his sink!

On the other hand, Morty probably wasn't in any danger, as Rick had repeatedly assured them—and hate him though he might, Rick always delivered. Nodding to himself, Jerry picked up the receiver, sucked in a deep breath, and dialed Beth's office.

"St. Equis Hospital, Dr. Smith speaking. How can I help you?"

He grinned. "Beth! It's me."

He could hear his wife smacking her forehead with her palm. "What do you want? Didn't I tell you not to talk to me until you put back our old sink?"

"I just wanted to let you know that our son is perfectly safe. There's nothing to worry about. Zero! So just leave it all to me."

"Okay then. Carry on," Beth said, impatience trickling into her voice. "Gotta go; I have an operation in ten minutes."

Jerry hung up. He puffed up his chest and pumped the air victoriously. He talked to her! And she wasn't too angry anymore. That was good. All he needed to ensure now was that Rick and Summer brought Morty back before she got home.

As soon as he had walked back to the couch, the phone rang again. Begrudgingly did he get up and yank the receiver from the base.

A rough, largely obscured voice spoke to him in what he supposed was a greeting.

"Who is this?" Jerry imposed prudently. He had expected it to be Beth, for some follow-up nagging.

Some adjustment seemed to have been made, for the line crackled and beeped uncomfortably in Jerry's ear; he remained riveted for some seconds.

"Dad," came the clearer, but breathless, reply. "Dad...can you hear me now?"

He recognized Summer's voice through the warble of intervening space, but more than that, her tone was grave; _that_ couldn't be interference. "Summer? What's the word? Did you find him?" he inquired warily.

"Dad," resumed Summer after a pause, "please don't worry any more than you need to. But please get mom right away. It's important. We'll open a portal in the garage for you in five minutes."

"Five minutes! And what about Morty?"

"Dad, _please_. We'll meet you soon."

With that, the line was dropped, and Jerry was left gaping at the lifeless phone in his hands, unable to process the urgency in Summer's words. Nonetheless, he let the panic seep into his nerves to the ends of his fingers and toes. Was something wrong? What was wrong? Why didn't Morty say anything? Why couldn't they just say what happened? Why, furthermore, couldn't they say where they were going?

A dark cloud stormed over his head and followed him as he paced the length of the kitchen, trying to shave off the excitable energy in his chest; he turned off the television, sought the quiet of his room, and, finding no solace in those places, found his way to the eventual meeting place, the garage.

The door was messed up from Rick's previous entry. He recalled the jarring crash from very early that morning; that was the only possible reason a hole this size would appear in the otherwise sturdy white metal. It looked like a hurricane had gone through the place: clothes, tools, broken glass, spilled liquids decorated the once-pristine floor. The only livable area was Rick's workstation, where an unfinished robot was being assembled.

Jerry gnashed his teeth and resisted the urge the throw the mess into a further, irredeemable mess. Instead, he gave the work table a grudging kick, and another follow-up, which did nothing to calm his nerves.

With the five-minute deadline ticking away—and Beth's operation in less than ten!—he had no option but to call her once more, admit his folly, and beg her to come home soon. There was no hesitation in his mind as he, for the third and final time that afternoon, picked up the phone.

 **~o0O0o~**

Summer exhaled. _I can do this_ , she repeated to herself, _I can do this..._

Rick knew for a fact that she could do it, seeing how she knew her way around the ship controls enough to crash it on purpose, so maneuvering the thing should be of no consequence.

Rick had bypassed the driver's seat and went to the back, where he gingerly laid Morty and began to apply first aid. He laid out four syringes filled with a deep blue liquid on the floor (kicking aside as much litter as he could under the seat for space). With as much haste as he could afford without sacrificing precision, he emptied three of them into Morty's arm, close to the wound. Immediately, Morty's contorted face relaxed into one of slumber; Summer exhaled slowly and tried to relax on the driver's seat.

She gave the keys an experimental twist. The engine came to life with a satisfying, gentle whir; the sound, no longer drudging and laborious, was a gentle hum under her hand, as if urging her on. Before she could press down on the gas pedal, a sharp prick registered on her right arm.

Rick stowed the fourth syringe out of sight, but she had seen its glint under the darkening sky. "You're still hurt. But it should help with the pain," he explained briefly, "Now get us out of here."

Summer looked back at Rick. He was busy bandaging Morty's shoulder wound with—no!—his lab coat, now torn into strips and dyed a dark red. He worked quickly: now he was applying the heated end of a glue gun to seal the stomach wound; now he was rubbing a balm, or gel, that made the bleeding stop; now he propped up Morty's torso, Summer presumed, so that the blood flow there was minimized.

"What are you waiting for?" barked Rick.

Summer complied: she brought them up into sky, and soon the patchwork gray melted away into the black emptiness of space. _Five minutes_ , she recalled; they had to open a portal in five minutes. From Treicel to near the familiar spiral arms of the Milky Way took a short journey of half a minute, with the hyper lightspeed boost on. With the aid of a hologram on the dashboard, Summer navigated to a space station that she recalled having visited once before.

Summer unclenched her white hands from the wheel and let out a long, tremulous breath. In the back, Rick sat on the floor by Morty. There was nothing more he could do, and his face said as much. Morty's chest rose and fell in shallow, but even, breaths; Rick, looking equally pale, did the same.

"Let's go," urged Rick.

Summer turned back to him. "The portal."

"Oh yeah." Rick unpocketed his portal gun, now stained blue from the contact it made with Luria's Flooble material as it disintegrated. "We should park first."

"You said five minutes."

"We were still on Treicel when we told them that. Who knows how long it's been."

"You do, of course," Summer jested lightheartedly with a roll of her eyes. She refocused on docking at the outer wheel of the space station, where at one of the giant rings, the sign "EMERGENCY ROOM" was printed.

 **~o0O0o~**

Beth and Jerry flowed anxiously into the familiar waiting room of that hospital. That they were here, that some emergency had required a visit to this place, rather than an ordinary hospital! Such trepidation overcame them. They looked around for any nurse that might assist them, but finding none, they contented themselves to find a seat among the cold row of chairs praising the television. In holding each other's hands in the freezing air conditioning, Beth found a warmth in Jerry's concern that she thought had been replaced by antipathy toward her endless nagging, her unrealistic expectations of him, her desire to be loved above and beyond her own merits. Her heart brimmed with discomfort, which resting her head on his shoulders temporarily alleviated.

Rick had been retching in the restroom when they arrived, and as he emerged, he walked over to them, wearing no trace of remorse. "Follow me," he said, with no greeting or formality. But the Smiths were used to that; they trailed him through several pristine halls that each smelled like death, as calmly as their anxious hearts permitted. But they looked left and right at every moment to ascertain that the nurses rushing dead bodies past them were not carrying Morty or Summer.

A powerful, utterly irrational love, such was natural to mothers and fathers, bloomed in their hearts and welled up through their eyes in hot tears as they came to the intensive care unit. They saw Morty hooked up to more wires and machines than they could count.

Rick held his hands behind his back and allowed them to enter ahead of him. Beth wanted to rush in, but Jerry found his courage from this morning, held Beth's arm, and confronted Rick once more.

"You said nothing was the matter, that Morty was just being 'pathetic'! How did this happen?"

Rick shrugged.

"And they had to operate on my son!"

"I know, I saw it."

"You were _responsible_ for him!"

"And I failed. Big whoop for the most astute father of the century," and Rick raised his hands in mock celebration.

"Dad!" Beth stepped forward and slapped him. She gasped at her own boldness, held her stinging palm to her chest, and looked away. "Did you know? You could have done anything, literally _anything_ you wanted, and I would forgive you: because you're my father, and I love you—need you, _wanted_ you back in my life for more than ten years. But this... This has to stop. I won't let you put Morty or Summer in harm's way. No more exceptions. I don't care what the benefits are, nor if you disagree with school, nor if it doesn't suit you to have your own grandchildren safe and sound! They're _mine!_ And I won't let you do to them what you did to me!" Her strength deserted her at last, and she covered her face with both hands.

Rick found a misrotated tile on the floor rather interesting at that moment. He refused to meet the hurt in his daughter's eyes, and therefore his own. "Just say the word..." he paused.

Jerry steered his sobbing wife away from Rick and into the ICU, where, previously out of sight, Summer sat on a bed in a hospital gown. She was awake and playing with her phone. She brightened when she saw them.

"Mom! Dad!"

Judging by her tone, both parents assumed that she was fine, but when they ran and embraced her, she grimaced in pain.

"I'm gonna get the coolest scar when this heals," she excused herself weakly, pointing with her thumb at her back. "It's really not his fault," she whispered, as if she had heard the conversation outside. But at this point, she knew that they were beyond swaying.

 **~o0O0o~**

Morty opened his eyes and had to shut them immediately: the lights overhead were blinding—was he still on Treicel? Had all that been another starvation-induced nightmare? Did he imagine Luria's horrible laugh? Did he imagine Summer's bravery? Did he imagine he was saved? That he was safe?

He wanted to sob away those concerns and just go back to sleep, wait for nightfall. No matter what Luria wanted, he wanted no part of it: he just had to find some stranger to beg for a ride, and he'd hitchhike back home if it took him years. He could stand being a beggar, working for scraps, maybe selling his organs or his voice or his brain for a chance to get back home. If Rick wasn't coming, he himself was all he could depend on.

But something warm was laid on top of his left shoulder. He flinched in pain, and remembering the reason that pain existed—he sat up with a start.

On one side of him sat his parents; Beth rested her head against Jerry's shoulder, while the latter looked manfully proud at being able to support his wife at such a crucial moment (and unbeknownst to them, happy that his sink might get a chance to stay after all this hubbub). On the other, Summer was playing with her phone on the next bed. The smell gave it all away: the psychedelic scents of Treicel were replaced by the clean, sterile smell of rubbing alcohol. He recognized this place, only because he'd been here once before: St. Gloopy Noops Hospital, reputedly the best hospital in the galaxy.

He was safe, he was _safe_ , his brain cried, but after being so greatly betrayed in the past week, he kept his celebration in check. Luria was a traitor, Rick cared nothing for him... He vaguely recalled the old man's face looking over him with something akin to sadness in his eyes. But that couldn't have been possible!

"Good to have you back, son!" Jerry ruffled his hair fondly.

Morty smiled meekly at them, then he looked at Summer. She had noticed him moving and was now searching the little drawer between their beds for something.

"Summer?"

"Wait." She found the item she sought and handed it to him gravely.

Morty accepted the item. "This...is my phone."

"You left it in the ship," she said. She returned to flicking on her news feed on her own phone, leaving Morty to wonder what her solemn face meant. In fact, everyone seemed to be wearing the same mask.

"What's going on?" he finally asked. He unlocked the phone with his PIN and saw that it was fully charged. Odd. It was drained when he last saw it.

The reason finally leapt at him—the grounds for everyone's silence: Rick's absence made itself felt in the static in the air.

"Where's Rick?" he demanded.

Summer pointed at his phone. Beth hid her face in Jerry's shoulder.

Morty looked at his phone and noticed an unread email from himself. "Huh?" He tapped the notification and began to read:

 _Morty,_

 _I swore I'd never let anything like Jellybean happen to you again, and yet we found you stranded on Treicel like little sheep in a den of wolves. That place is horrible if you don't know what's going on. I call that place my home for the escape it brings me. You've seen your fair share of shit, but that place wasn't for your eyes to see, nor your ears to hear, nor your lungs to breathe in._

 _The air there might as well be poison. The lights are magnified tenfold, its loneliness unrivaled. Its gravity is a hundred times stronger than Earth's. Time flies slowly in that place. I left you there about six hours. You must have spent days, and as I calculate it, it was a week of torture to you._

 _I'm only stating the facts. I was responsible for your safety, and I failed. So let me tell you this, and I'll say it just once, with no room for argument. I'm leaving you and the family for_ good, _because I am a lunatic who cannot and will not change_ — _I refuse to. My mind is my prison, but I would rather die alone than bring down anyone else into a misery you don't want to be acquainted with._

 _I'm leaving my ship to you and Summer; she's a good pilot; maybe she'll teach you someday. Go home, go back to school. And pay attention, I won't bother you anymore. Grow up. Have an ultimately ordinary, mundane life, whatever you deem best for yourself. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise._

 _Good luck, and goodb—_

A guttural scream escaped Morty as he tore his eyes from the phone and very nearly threw it against the wall. Words, questions, formed in his chest, but they got stuck in his throat. His eyes brimmed with tears, his face burned, his chest was so heavy that he needed to run, to jump, to fly out the window.

"How long have I been out?!" he begged, scrambling to escape the bed sheets that held him in place.

Jerry looked embarrassed; Beth answered for him.

"A day," she said gently, stroking his hair. "We...didn't try to stop him. And for once," she looked at her husband with glassy eyes, "I agree with Jerry. It was about time he left."

"Why did you let him?" seethed Morty. "I still need to give that piece of shit a piece of my mind!"

"Morty, son," Jerry began in a pacifying tone. "He put you in danger. I don't know the specifics; I don't think I need to."

" _I_ do!" cried Morty.

"It had to stop," insisted Jerry. "Taking you out at odd hours? And now you're hurt beyond belief? That—" he pointed at Morty's stomach, where a spot of red was showing through his hospital gown, "—that is unforgivable."

"But what about me? You never asked me anything! I'm not done with that fucking bastard yet—Summer!" He sought warmth in his sister, but only found a similar distress in her brown eyes.

"I couldn't stop him, Morty," she said. She turned her back on the three and covered her head with her blanket.

"But you were there! What did he say?" No one answered him. "Did you all just _let_ him?" He swiped at his tears with his arm; he saw how much weight he had lost, and the color he had gained under the unforgiving orange sun.

A few nurses and some neighboring patients came to inspect the noise at that point. Morty was put under sedation as an immediate treatment. The doctors deemed him delusional after the stress he'd been under. They agreed that Treicel was no longer a myth, despite its distance and its lack of residents; indeed, they had treated previous survivors before, but with little to no success. Thanks to the regeneration gel that Rick used to treat Morty's dangerous injuries, they promised Morty could be discharged within the week _if_ he presented no further psychological breakdowns. He was only able to leave after three.

* * *

Up Next: "Morty liked to imagine that his patience was well-tested and rather malleable after enduring Treicel's endless day, but eventually, he realized he was quite the opposite." An epilogue.


	8. Epilogue: Exile

**Epilogue - Exile**

Sunlight crept slowly through the blinds on that Sunday morning, eight years later. Morty was slouched over his desk, his eyelids too heavy to open despite the nagging alarm. "RING, RING, RING, GET UP PLEASE, YOU'RE GONNA BE LATE!" It was a voice recording Morty made on his phone four years ago, when he had settled in his new dorm on the university campus. So far, it had never worked, and he had never arrived on time in any class.

He awoke of his own accord about an hour later. His back ached from being slouched over his study desk, which was strewn with notes and open physics books. He gave it a dejected look. Four years of study, and still no clue where Rick had gone.

He had used his remaining, distraction-free years in high school to prepare for his college entrance exams, and his college years studying quantum physics in the hope that understanding Rick's portal gun would help him recreate the exceptional, dimension-crossing device, in the hopes of finding a chance to speak with Rick for a few minutes.

Rick made good on his word, to never disturb the quiet lives of the Smith family. It wasn't that Rick had even been particularly present nor attentive to his daughter's family's needs when he was there, but since he left, the dining table always felt unbalanced as long as his chair was empty. And empty it remained even as Morty left his parents' home and found a dormitory far away enough to not be reminded of the antics they'd had long ago.

When Morty was finally given leave to check out from Gloopy Noops, they had used Rick's ship, under Summer's surprisingly expert hand, to get home. It was a long journey of twenty hours without hyper light speed travel (they had evidently used up the microverse battery's reserves for their previous two jumps). But the stops were mapped out on the computer, and the A.I. offered competent automatic piloting whenever Summer needed a break.

The garage had been cleaned out by the time they arrived, and the gaping hole on the door fixed: all of Rick's earthly belongings—clothes, books, wallets, and all his scientific equipment and inventions—were in a black garbage bag in front of the driveway. It was the disposal that Jerry had initiated in rage which Rick completed in submission. It seemed the only items Rick had taken with him were the clothes he wore and the portal gun itself. His flask and its contents were among the pile.

Morty clenched his fists. He looked at the calendar. It had been eight years now. At the close of the school year on his second year of high school, he felt the extent of Rick's concern for him, which was absolutely nothing. No matter how much Summer repeated their side of the story, all of her disappointment and the light of Rick's redemption, Morty would not—could not—believe that anything could trigger such a change of heart in the scientist. And if the cause that change was him—all the more impossible. Morty hoped that the lingering confusion in his chest wouldn't subside, but time only served to dull the anger into nothing more than a faint, lingering "I wish he had at least said goodbye properly."

Outside, he could hear the tolling of the university's bell towers. Was there some sort of event? His eyes landed on the wall calendar, where today's date was encircled in thick red marker with the note, "Graduation day!" He could still repeat Rick's creed that "school is a waste of time." And yet, he was here. He could be marching in that grand auditorium, but he just felt that he wasn't finished yet. Not until he found Rick.

 **~o0O0o~**

Morty liked to imagine that his patience was well-tested and rather malleable after enduring Treicel's endless day, but eventually he realized he was quite the opposite. He was _this_ close to matching up the equations for Relativity and Quantum Theory; he had earned himself a few titles which he didn't bother claiming (for what were earthly accolades in the grand universal scheme?); he had shut off romance and family to pursue his one dream single-mindedly and without pause; but the portal gun was still a foreign object. He shook his head in awe and respect at that elusive goal, that stroke of genius that had made trans-universal travel possible, and that was just out of his reach.

He had to admit that he couldn't do it by himself, but not for years more. When he learned to accept this, he turned his focus into trying to contact the Citadel, or, failing that, another Morty who could, so that he could ask, _beg_ , for information. He had assumed, based on the few times that other Ricks and Mortys had visited their humble dimension previously, that one day a salesman offering something new, or a drunk Rick, or a lost Morty, would wander by the garage. By chance, or perhaps it was his luck turning, a mysterious call woke him from a dreamless sleep and told him there was a way to visit the Citadel; the caller was an orphaned Morty, from W-412', who had been laid off, without any other living family, and who had been left a portal gun illegally. It was a one-time offer, this Morty said: he wanted to turn himself in for letting down his Rick, and maybe find employment in the Citadel rather than wander the Earth aimlessly; he had been browsing alternate realities and found C-144 Morty's dedicated search inspiring. He'd changed his life! No other Morty he had seen had made such scientific progress, save one, whom he didn't name.

The Citadel was falling into ruin; the workforce was being replaced by Mortys, as every Rick, save those who had been born a few years off, was turning brittle and senile. Morty didn't think it possible, the way Rick moved and danced and lithely ran for his life when necessary. He was loath to believe it, but that was almost ten years ago. Was his Rick even still alive? He pondered this with a heavy heart as he followed the main road into the middle of the city, where the grand palace stood, still golden and glittering. However, the Council itself, and every Rick he could get a hold of, turned him away haughtily, with such jeers and snobbish laughter at his futile effort as, "Which one?" And after a long discussion with the Record-Keeper Rick, he was gifted one tiny shred of hope, "Oh yes. C-144?" Morty beamed, until the secretary added, after referring to his tablet, "He's been dead twenty years."

Morty couldn't mask his astonishment. "But...then who was I with? Wh-who was the one who blacks out when drunk...a-and frequents Treicel?" he squeaked.

"This is all we've got. You know Ricks don't like to disclose their whereabouts, even to the council. Sorry, kid, I can't help you. But Treicel, though: good times, good times," nodded the record keeper to himself before leaving the customer window for a drink.

Morty walked away with mixed feelings. If C-144 Rick had been dead before his Rick "came back" to the family when he was fourteen, then that person was someone else entirely, someone he couldn't trace by dimension or blood, since those would be useless. He had no portal gun, no way to find _his_ Rick. Even so, Morty wished his Rick had even spent a fraction of this time he spent now, in searching for him when he'd been lost in Treicel. Even if he'd failed—his train of thought stopped there: he had failed, utterly and miserably. He would never find closure; there'll be no such thing in his life. He had wasted his youth and his friends and his future, all for nothing. Didn't Rick say he was never coming back? Morty wondered if perhaps—how grisly to consider!—if perhaps, Rick had killed himself then and there, after he delivered Morty to the hospital's care and left the dimension. What irony, what cruel fate! Morty berated himself: he'd been naive all this time, his search was bound for failure from the start.

With a heart in pieces, he found the Citadel's universal portal and asked to be taken home. The guards frisked him and let him pass without further question. He found his apartment, ever dull and lifeless, to be a haunted place. The bed offered no sleep, and his research offered no diversion; indeed, no consolation was found in that empty world.

 **~o0O0o~**

Morty decided to leave Earth as soon as he could put together some form of spaceship; nothing like Rick's old, reliable one, which Summer had kept and continued to drive. Morty's wreck-in-the-making was enough only to get around the galaxy and minutely beyond, enough only to check if, by some cosmic chance, he'd find a place where the brain scanner's signal became neutralized. He had kept that one little device, of Rick's many trashed inventions, out of nostalgia; it had been the first time Rick had remotely indicated that Morty was useful to him. He refused to believe that Rick was dead, and maybe he'd spend his life wandering the stars, an outcast. However, it was the opposite: he didn't want to get ahead of himself, but the data wouldn't lie, _right?_ By chance, he traced Rick's singular presence by exploiting the very thing he used to hide from the feds: Morty's brainwaves, of the exact opposite phase as Rick's.

Here, in this restful paradise, the scanner indicated a perfectly flat line.

When Morty stepped down from his rickety ship, his eyes instantly wandered to the open, cloudless skies above, painted a meek, Earth-like blue. Before him stood a small wooden cabin, with gentle white smoke issuing from a slender chimney in the back. The velveteen grass cushioning his feet—and the burbling of a nearby water source—prefaced a rustic life that renounced sorrow of any kind.

He had expected something...less calm and relaxing for the exile that Rick had fled to—and for what purpose, Morty could only hazard a guess. Since Rick had abandoned his flask, then this could be both for healing as well as punishment. There was nothing resembling carbonic life as far as he could see, save for the verdure that grew abundantly on the soft earth around him. The isolation felt like the same sentence Morty had served himself on Earth, but here, there were no colleagues to argue with, to drink with occasionally, to wake him up when he was late for a lecture or an important exam. Here, there was only that one pale sun, that dull pink moon for company, and the eternally relaxing caress of the wind.

Morty waited awhile for his feelings to calm down before they got the better of him; he was beginning to get a little light-headed from the sweet piney scents around him. His eyes were cloudy, but he dared not let that dew fall before he was certain. He allowed this guilty relief to trickle over him as he closed the ship's door and stepped toward the humble abode. He had had ten years to prepare for this. But when his knuckles were in position to knock, his hand refused to make contact. He chose to call out instead, but his tongue lodged stubbornly at his palate. He groaned. This wasn't the time to be clamming up! No matter how much he'd been betrayed, it was all or nothing now: if Rick was dead, then...so be it. But if he lived! Morty was ready to either forgive or renounce him. _If_ he lived, he wanted desperately to hear him say "sorry" for the whole mess or "fuck you, I already quit." Closure, for better or for worse, will be had; this gasping sliver of hope was the absolute last his heart could bear. The scanner line was _flat!_ So Rick had to be...

He pushed open the door with all the dread of just finding a cold, pest-ridden corpse inside, but to his surprise, a living head turned at the sound, at first wary of the intrusion. The ever-alert eyes soon turned into teary orbs as their owner, unbelievably thin and gray, but still as sprightly as Morty remembered, jumped up to give him the warmest hug he had ever received.

 **END.**

* * *

A/N: AND THERE YOU HAVE IT! Thanks to those who followed and faved and reviewed! Thanks for all of you who stuck with me, and I hope it was an interesting read!

Regarding the "science" in this fic: Sometimes, I make stuff up; I can only guess at the portal gun's mechanism, and how it might be used to purposely kill (I only saw Season 3's brief mention of "portal gun fluid" long after I had written that scene). Sometimes I recall my physics lessons; the term "phase", referring to light waves, I'm happy to remember; and gravity wells _do_ create a perceived dilation of time. Other times, I draw from games like EVE Online to depict the movements of spacecraft beyond light speed, as well as learning the terms for ship classes (frigates, destroyers, etc—which are actually based on real life).

Finally, I only reveal at the end that this pair isn't from C-137. That's a valid excuse to mess up their characters— *dies from being thrown tomatoes*

Again, thank you! Please leave a review! 'Til next time!


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